Mollitiam Industries, a small and few well -known Spanish spyware manufacturer, closes.
The collapse of the start first reported With intelligence and surveillance, a new Intelligence online website accuses the company’s fall on financial issues. Public business files Confirm that the company was bankrupt on January 23.
Unlike the hacking team, the NSO Group and now Paragon Solutions, Mollitiam Industries, which is based in Toledo, a city outside Madrid, Spain, has largely operated out of public promotion. In part, secrecy is just a consequence of the nature of the spyware industry: there are many sellers around the world and a significant percentage do not want any publicity.
Another reason why Mollitiam Industries avoids publicity may have less relationship with the spyware industry itself and more than the fact that Spyware’s start was based on Spain, which does not take much attention from international English media , and also because Mollitiam Industries was only known to be involved in a scandal in Colombia, another place that can be submitted to the English -speaking world.
At the time of writing, Mollitiam Industries’ official website It’s still online. The company did not respond to a request for comments sent to an email address listed on the site. When TechCrunch called a phone number mentioned in the company’s Google Maps list, the line was busy. According to LinkedIn’s official accountMollitiam Industries had between 11 and 50 employees.
In 2021, Mollitiam Industries first diven the attention of English -speaking media. Wired reported at that time The fact that a brochure left inadvertently online from a third party showed that the boot developed spyware products called invisible and night detector, designed to secretly export data from target devices, including messaging applications such as Telegram and Telegram Whatsapp, activate the cameras and the microphone of the device, steal the codes access and logs.
The previous year, 2020, Colombian News Magazine Semana reported That its journalists and offices were under physical and digital surveillance by the country’s military intelligence service, whose agents intimidate journalists with threats including their strokes. The surveillance and bullying campaign came after the magazine had published investigations into alleged injustices by army officers in 2019.
“A colonel in cyberspace offered me 50 million pesos [around $15,000 at the time] To introduce a malicious software (virus) into the computers of Semana journalists and thus be able to access information, “a source told the magazine.
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Do you have more information about Mollitiam Industries or other spyware manufacturers? From a device and non-work network, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-bicchierai safely on the mark on +1 917 257 1382, or through the telegram and keybase @lorenzofb or email. You can also contact TechCrunch via securedrop.
This malicious software was developed by Mollitiam Industries, According to a photo of a contract Between the National Army of Colombia (Ejército Nacional de Colombia) and Mollitiam Industries.
The document showed that the military service made an offer of about 3 billion fallen (about $ 900,000 at that time) to obtain a system called “Hombre Invisible” (or invisible man). The software is said to be capable of infecting Windows MacOS and devices so remote, hiding in the office documents and through the USB drive. Malicious software could also bypass virus protection software and allow military officers to infect an “unlimited” number of active targets.
“This tool allows us to do everything: Enter any computer, access to whatsapp and telegraphic calls and conversations. Download archived or deleted conversation conversations, photos and generally what is stored in the memory of the contaminated machine,” said an anonymous source Semana.
The same year as Colombian scandal, Mollitiam Industries gave an electronic conversation Through the ISS World, a series of conferences for companies that want to sell products to law enforcement services and information.
The company wrote in the description of the speech that end -to -end encryption made it harder to obstruct the intended persons and referred to the need to use malicious software to endanger the target device in order to access their communications. According to the description“Mollitiam will explain the roots of this approach through software demonstrations and share innovative features such as WhatsApp Voip calls.”
Mollitiam Industries was active at least by the end of 2023, according to Meta. At the beginning of 2024, Meta said in a report That he had removed a fake account network on Facebook and Instagram connected to the Mollitiam industries.
“Mollitiam Industries and its customers ran fake accounts they used to test malicious possibilities between their own accounts and the outwell of public information. Similar to other lease monitoring companies, used IP-Logging links aimed at detecting IP addresses IP of their goals, ”they read the report. They also dealt with electronic “e -fishing” phishing and social engineering “fishing”, mainly aimed at people in Spain, Colombia and Peru, including political opposition, journalists, anti -corruption activists and activists and activists of police abuse “.
Spain, and in particular Barcelona, recently became a home for newly formed businesses, some of which were founded by foreigners hiring security researchers from other countries, including Italy and Israel.
While the company has received relatively little attention, its activities were identified by international amnesty. Jurre Van Bergen, a technologist at Amnesty Security Lab Companies’ products.
“Extremely misleading a spyware manufacturer not to put it behind a protection wall,” Van Bergen told TechCrunch. “I guess I’m not surprised as their misleading job went bankrupt.”
